[IC] (Promethean: The Created 2E) Muddy Waters

[Arcanist]

Muddy Waters

Winnipeg the ruin, Winnipeg of the haunted past,
Winnipeg of murder and flames.
Winnipeg of cold and death,
Winnipeg of the hopeless,
Winnipeg the doomed.
–Jonathan Ball, Preface to The Shadow Over Portage and Main

Once upon a time, it was marked ‘Chicago of the North’ and it was supposed to be the first city in North America to hit a population of a million, but it was eaten out by corruption, and then crippled by the following strikes. It’s a patchwork city, cobbled together from the corpses of several others, and assembled around the beating heart of three mighty rivers. It’s the Heart of the Continent, born in bloody revolution, and steeped in fire and blood ever since.

It is a city of extremes.

Extremes in temperature, extremes in relationships, extremes in arts.

It has been called the most generous city in Canada, and also its most racist.
It is home to fatalistic visionary artists who never get their careers off the prairie ground.
Locals can’t wait to get out of here, and visitors don’t want to leave.

You can make one thing into another in Winnipeg, and that’s true alchemy.

Current Player Characters
1. @Caladiru : Earth Crisis/Earth-Dies-Screaming/Earth, Recovering Centimanus
2. @Wormwood : Mark 5, Hero with an ‘F’ in good

*****

Thursday, November 3^rd, 2016
Winnipeg, Manitoba

Something strange is afoot in the city of Muddy Waters- a thick fog hangs over the entire city, thicker than much of the population has ever seen in their lifetime. As the day waxes on, the locals expect it to dissipate, but it doesn't. For the first time in living memory, the fog holds, it persists. There's a Thing That Must Not Be, so we must be in Winnipeg. The people continue on with their day- they are a people of sweltering heat and freezing cold, a little mist isn't going to keep them from their lives. Terracotta edifices disappear into low-lying clouds as pale streetlights cast small bubbles of incandescence out into the concealing fog.

Faculty protest corruption on the campus of the University of Manitoba.

The Health Sciences Centre closes after a shoot out at Starbucks.

A car smashed through the storefront of a Shopper's Drug Mart.

Vogue just released an article praising the city for eclectic, exotic beauty

All in all, a normal day.

A hundred year journey begins with a single step- where does your Pilgrimage begin?

[Caladriu]

Earth
Conditions: Enraged
Alembics: Arc (0), Imperatus (0), Weaponize (0), Redirect (0)
Health: OOOOOOOOOO | Willpower: 5/5 | Pyros: 6/12 | Beats: 0/5 | Vitriol Beats: 0/5

Cold and shame don't really get to her, so she's just wearing boots and jeans and a black racerback top that shows off her Inscription and her hideous countenance. Her rugged backpack full of books and tapes and living supplies is slung over her shoulders, and her hair hangs low and untamed.

As long as she has the fog on her side, she's headed into the Exchange District today. Hopefully Mark 5 is coming along, too. In her experience, this body of hers gets hassled less by Winnipeg humans when it has a man accompanying it, and picking fights isn't her plan today. Instead, she's hoping to do a close investigation of the alleys and cobblestones for Pilgrim marks and other signs of Created passing through.

Intelligence or Wits + Investigation, I roll a chance die either way. First roll of the campaign, Intelligence+Investigation: 1d10h10 0

Let's start this off right by making that a dramatic failure for a Beat.

[Arcanist]

Earth

Market Square is surprisingly quiet at this time of day. No one in the nearby offices or college campus have gone on break, and no one has gone to get lunch at the various restaurants and coffee shops that surround you. The air smells like used cigarettes and mouldering leaves, and a strange undercurrent of floral perfume as the fog lies heavy across the streets, occluding the normally welcoming architecture that had aged so carefully into a gandfatherly air, but now the wrought iron fire escapes and balcony railings jut out like teeth from stone edifices. It's limestone, ocean stone, so different from the gorgeous red sandstone of your birthplace... so much colder. You darken the doorway of 92 Albert Street, catching a glimpse of some graffiti. A lone woman walks by across the street, looking at something on her phone, oblivious to all the world.

You can read the alchemical symbolism clearly. The warped, multi-faceted face with the heavy brows and judgemental eyes is a Hekatonkheir, a Hundred-Handed One, a Centimanus. The hourglass is a symbol of heaven joining with earth, obviously intended to stand in for the airy nature of the sanguine Dead Girl and the heavy stone of Earth's own melancholic humour. The 'Fuck Off!' was likely there before, but the stencil below... that was put down at the same time. Ominous words- "YOUR END WILL COME" -in bold letters. There was a finality to that statement. The vaguely American Southwestern iconography that surrounded it offered dangerous hints.

It seemed that even amongst her own people, Earth was an outcast. She couldn't run from what she'd done at the Grand Canyon.

OOC: Earth gains a Beat from the Dramatic Failure and gains the Alienated Condition. Her reading of what is purely mortal graffiti with a veneer of her own past is giving the illusion that the local Created know who she is, and want her out of here. Or, worse, that someone has followed her from Arizona.

[Caladriu]

Earth
Conditions: Enraged, Alienated
Alembics: Arc (0), Imperatus (0), Weaponize (0), Redirect (0)
Health: OOOOOOOOOO | Willpower: 5/5 | Pyros: 6/12 | Beats: 1/5 | Vitriol Beats: 0/5

What in the world was so interesting about those phones? What were they looking at all the time? She hadn't actually held one in her hands before, so it was a complete mystery to her.

Alchemical graffiti, that she understood. Her face darkened as she recognized the obvious message. Her Repute preceded her, as always. She thought about defacing the tag, finding a broken bottle or a chunk of brick and tearing up the painted surface- but no, not yet. That could wait. It's better to let revenge cook for a while, until you find someone to take it out on.

Instead, she growled and climbed onto a dumpster to get a handhold on the bottom rung of an access ladder. At least she knew she was in an area with recent Created traffic. She continued the search for other Pilgrim Marks in the area, this time climbing onto rooftops and into out of the way urban crevices humans couldn't easily reach. AC units, fire escapes, spots that could only be seen from a certain angle in a certain light.

Strength+Athletics: 8d10h8 2 [should have been 7 dice, ignore that last die]

[Wormwood]

Mark 5
Conditions: Tenacious
Alembics: Hygeius (0), Motus (0), Unbroken (0), Unconquered (0)
Health: OOOOOOOOOO | Willpower: 6/6 | Pyros: 6/11 | Beats: 0/5 | Vitriol Beats: 0/5

As usually, Mark 5 was atop of things, running over the roofs towards the point Earth had wanted to meet up. He was late because he beat up a mugger or something like a mugger. Wearing just a black shirt, jogging pants and some old running sneakers, he wasn't fashionable, but practically dressed. He wasn't wearing his mask, so he didn't go as Rockbreaker at the moment.
Running around on rooftops was also a nice opportunity to improve on his Parkour, so when he noticed someone 'intruding' in his realm, he slid down a water pipe to meet up.

Dexterity+Athletics: 2 sux

[Arcanist]

Earth & Mark 5

The youthful-looking Titan sailed across the rooftops, the sound of heavy footsteps perplexing the humans who lived in the apartments and artisan's lofts that were being leased above the storefronts. The fog swirled around him, parting before his vigorous motion. Even without the active application of alchemy, Mark 5 was an image of natural physical prowess and grace. There aren't manyregions in Winnipeg where you could get away with leaping between rooftops. Most would-be parkour practitioners in the city either ran through either side of the Exchange District, or they found themselves a forest and leapt through the trees.

From up on the rooftops you can see the occasional car pass by, looping lazily around the intersecting streets. A moving van pulls up to the Winnipeg Film Group theatre, Cinemathique, and begins unloading pallets of soda and boxes of chocolate bars. An East Indian couple sidesteps some of the workmen on their way to a children's furniture store. The woman is carrying a baby in a cloth wrap, the little homunculus bouncing in time to their mother's stride, gazing in wonder at the world around them with uncomprehending, fuzzy vision.

Mark is familiar with the area himself. The Exchange is, along with a centre of arts and culture, a nightlife hub in Winnipeg. It's also close enough to the North End that every once in a while, something unsavoury goes down. Halloween night he was walking up Main Street when a woman was clotheslined by some passing brute who'd started fighting with a man nearby. One of the men valiantly threw himself at the assailant, hurtling him into the street. They were sloppy, unskilled, graceless. Mark 5 had ended the battle easily, even without alchemy, handily flattening both of them in quick succession. He's still not quite sure what he did to frighten the nearby crowd of humans.

[Caladriu]

Earth
Conditions: Enraged, Alienated
Alembics: Arc (0), Imperatus (0), Weaponize (0), Redirect (0)
Health: OOOOOOOOOO | Willpower: 5/5 | Pyros: 6/12 | Beats: 1/5 | Vitriol Beats: 0/5

She was still shook from the ominous graffiti when Mark 5 caught up to her, sitting on a fire escape, looking for more weirdness in the alley. She just grunted to acknowledge him, no eye contact.

"There's more of us in the neighborhood. They know I'm here, and they don't want me. Left a message to scare me off."

She waved in the direction of the offending mural.

"Whatever. If they want me, they'll feel my radiance and come get me. But there's supposed to be older pilgrim marks around here, too. If we can find some, maybe there's treasure. Or trouble. Better than hanging around being hungry, anyway."

She still hadn't looked him in the eye, but she relaxed a little as she sniffed the air. "Weird fog today. Think it's haunted?"

[Haberdasher]

Adonis
Conditions/Tilts: Masked
Alembics: Eros (0), Assimilate (0), Eris (0)
Health: OOOOOOO I WP: 5/5 I Pyros 5/10
Beats: 0/5 I Vitriol Beats: 0/5

Not for the first or last time, Adonis shakes his head at what a strange city Winnipeg is. The humans seem to claw at each other here out of anger and desperation. Don't they realize that won't help them? He keeps his head down as he walks, relying on the power of Assimilate to mask his movement through the crowds. This way, he's just another person to them.

His thoughts wander to Lily. He wonders what she's up to. Has she moved on? Has she found someone new? He didn't ask her to stay loyal to him, nor him to her, but he still remembers her smiling down on him when he pleased her in some way. The touch of her skin on his... He shakes himself. Don't stay stuck in place. You're still friends. That's better for you now. Lily hadn't been upset with him when he told her he needed to move on. She had just given him a kiss on the cheek and told him to come to her if he needed anything. And it was true- but he didn't need Lily to guide him and train him anymore. He needed somebody to call a companion. Lilly couldn't be that to him... could she?

The fog is thick tonight, thicker than usual. Is it somehow different tonight?

[Wormwood]

Mark 5
Conditions: Tenacious
Alembics: Hygeius (0), Motus (0), Unbroken (0), Unconquered (0)
Health: OOOOOOOOOO | Willpower: 6/6 | Pyros: 6/11 | Beats: 0/5 | Vitriol Beats: 0/5

Mark 5 greeted Earth with a nod, then silently watched her before he turned his gaze towards the mural and the surrounding area. "They want a fight, they get it." He looked down, at the streets, then he shook his head and added "Don't know about the fog. Definitely not normal. But don't know about haunted. Be right back."

With this, he went to investigate the mural and it's supposed message.


__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________
Wits+investigation 0 sux
going with intelligence wouldn't have made a difference, either.
welp. Let's turn that into a dramatic failure, too, just so we have two dangerous Prometheans acting on complete misconceptions ^^"

[Arcanist]

Adonis

A walk down Portage Avenue was benefitted by the quiet, subtle alchemy of the Alembics at work in the Muse's body, but even without the Azoth-aided instinct to step where no one would be standing, it became fairly clear to Adonis that no one would have hassled him along the way. People went out of their way to avoid eye contact with one another, keenly aware that for all the polite veneer of storefronts and office buildings, downtown Winnipeg was something of a hollowed out husk, with a few oases of life, like the Exchange District, or Broadway. Along either side of Portage Avenue, unkempt beggars sit in ragged parkas with cardboard signs. The seasons are harsh on the homeless in Winnipeg. The man you just stepped past, as invisible to the crowds as you would be if you charged your Alembic, stretches out two completely fingerless hands. One side of his face is a mess of pale skin, an ear completely missing, his hair fallen out in clumps, eyebrows and eyelashes gone. He might have appeared to be Native American, at one point.

Eventually, Adonis takes a turn up Notre Dame, passing the Solid Gold strip club in the Oxford Hotel he'd heard about every so often from Lily or her friends before taking another sharp right and wandering up Albert Street into Market Square. The fog is doing fascinating things to the cobblestone streets and terracotta tenements, making them damp with condensed dew. You can hear twenties swing music playing at half speed, emanating from one of the upper windows in a decaying apartment block. A small shack of a diner called White Star slumps next to it, the red paint on its walls valiantly trying to keep up appearances.

He comes into Market Square to enjoy the solitude and quiet of the park, away from the stifling presence of human crowds.

Earth & Mark 5

Primed, perhaps, by Earth's own conviction, Mark 5 follows their translation of the alchemical symbolism present in the graffiti. This presents an opportunity to the Titan and the Fury, a chance to direct their martial prowess upon a potentially worthy foe. However, a thought crosses his mind. If this Promethean followed Earth all the way from Arizona, surely they had been wronged, perhaps even lost loved ones, to the horror that was Earth-Dies-Screaming. He likes Earth, and finds their efforts to be good fascinating, but don't their victims deserve justice as well? Who does the Soldier fight for? Who does the Martyr die for? It's an... unsettling question to be sure, one that will likely plague his strongly polarized moral compass for quite some time.

However, the two Prometheans can feel something at their edge of their awareness.

Something is coming. Something heavy with the Flame Immortal.

Poor, foolish Created- you've fallen into a trap.

OOC: Mark 5 takes a Beat and gains the Alienated Condition. Everyone rolls Wits + Azoth to detect Azothic Radiance, including Adonis. Realistically, Adonis should have sensed Earth from several blocks away, but they're close enough now that they can all sense one another. Unless, of course, Adonis decided to store his Azoth in his Hovel (wherever that may be) in which case he isn't giving off Radiance of any kind right now.

[Haberdasher]

Adonis
Conditions/Tilts: Masked
Alembics: Eros (0), Assimilate (0), Eris (0)
Health: OOOOOOO I WP: 5/5 I Pyros 5/10
Beats: 0/5 I Vitriol Beats: 0/5

Quiet. As much as he wants to be around people, people don't give quiet enough credit. The solitude reminds him of his trip here from Ontario, weeks and months of wandering the roads, hitchhiking with strangers as far as Disquiet would permit them.

He's about to settle in for some sullen contemplation when something draws his attention. Azoth?

[Adonis attempts to detect Azothic Radiance. Wits 2 + Azoth 2 = 4 dice -> 1 success.[/spoiler]

Yes, two other Created. His mood perks up. He rarely encounters other Created in person. He'll follow the Radiance to its source and speak to them. Hopefully they're in a talking mood.

[Wormwood]

Mark 5
Conditions: Tenacious, Alienated
Alembics: Hygeius (0), Motus (0), Unbroken (0), Unconquered (0)
Health: OOOOOOOOOO | Willpower: 6/6 | Pyros: 6/11 | Beats: 1/5 | Vitriol Beats: 0/5

The Titan made a face. A rather ugly face. This... conflict was uncomfortable. He avoided to look Earth in the eyes."Looks like you were right." He gave the city a long, hard lookand mumbled something under his breath. Conceivably, it was a challenge to the world at large.
He was never one to wait long for a challenge to appear. Before long, he was going to seek it out.
Then, he noticed another Azothic Radiance. Looks like the locals didn't waste much time at least. Less time to contemplate, more time to just act.

He reached out his hand to Earth, to help her get up. She didn't need the help, yeah sure. Still, it was a gesture of... of what, actually? "You coming?"

__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________
Wits+Azoth- 1 sux

[Caladriu]

Earth
Conditions: Enraged, Alienated
Alembics: Arc (0), Imperatus (0), Weaponize (0), Redirect (0)
Health: OOOOOOOOOO | Willpower: 5/5 | Pyros: 6/12 | Beats: 1/5 | Vitriol Beats: 0/5

Wits+Azoth: 6d10h8 4

In the mood she was in, she didn't take his hand. "I'm coming."

She hoisted herself up and soon felt her Fire roar. "You feel that too? Bet that's our guy."

It was hard to say whether the Titan would stand by her if it came to blows. They hadn't known each other that long, and there were many reasons to hate and fear her, many of which she repeated to herself in her sleep. She wasn't sure whether she could take him in a fight, either. But hopefully they could at least close ranks against a stranger.

When Adonis came into sight, she looked him dead in the eye and slammed one fist against the offending graffiti. She pointed fingers at him that crackled with electricity. "That's the one. Get over here, pretty boy. You painted this, huh?"

[Haberdasher]

Adonis
Conditions/Tilts: Masked
Alembics: Eros (0), Assimilate (0), Eris (0)
Health: OOOOOOO I WP: 5/5 I Pyros 5/10
Beats: 0/5 I Vitriol Beats: 0/5

"That's the one. Get over here, pretty boy. You painted this, huh?"

It's a Created alright. Two, actually. One he knows: Mach 5. The other one...

His heart drops into his feet. It's her. Earth, the Tammuz. The former Centimanus. Her name has been whispered among the Created. The dead drops they usually use to communicate with each other have told of her coming, and the rumors have been swirling about what she did as a Hundred-Handed One.

He looks at the graffiti Earth was referring to.

[Wits 2 + Investigation 0 = chance dice -> how is this possible?[/spoiler]

Then he looks back at the angry Tammuz, eyes spooked and his hands up. "Um... no? Look, um- Earth, right? I'm not sure this thing has anything to do with you. This is... just graffiti."

He looks over at Mach 5 and spreads his arms, pleading for backup. "Come on, Mach 5. Back me up. Am I smart enough to come up with something like this?"

[Caladriu]

Earth
Conditions: Enraged, Alienated
Alembics: Arc (0), Imperatus (0), Weaponize (0), Redirect (0)
Health: OOOOOOOOOO | Willpower: 5/5 | Pyros: 6/12 | Beats: 1/5 | Vitriol Beats: 0/5

"Um... no? Look, um- Earth, right?"

"In the flesh."

"I'm not sure this thing has anything to do with you. This is... just graffiti."

Not the reaction she expected. She let the lightning dissipate. "No. Look."

She spread the gnarled and warty fingers of her right hand across the tagged wall, channeling her inner art critic.

The face looking in multiple directions at once: "Hundred faces, hundred hands. Centimani."

The hourglass with the bottom filled up. "Sand and sky. Earth and air. Me and- you know, Her."

A stick figure that vaguely resembled a kokopelli. "Arizona. Where I came from."

Her fingers curled around a rogue 'fuck off' and moved on to the more recent-looking 'YOUR END WILL COME.' "I know a threat when I see one. I know the stories they tell about me."

"Come on, Mach 5. Back me up. Am I smart enough to come up with something like this?"

She narrowed her eyes at her fellow Tammuz. The whole world allayed against her. "You know this one?"